{"id":138725,"date":"2026-02-19T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T13:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/138725\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T13:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T13:39:16","slug":"mamdani-launches-his-first-salvos-in-new-yorks-fiscal-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/138725\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani Launches His First Salvos in New York\u2019s Fiscal Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politics<\/a><\/p>\n

\/ <\/p>\n

The Mamdani Beat<\/a><\/p>\n

\/
\n February 19, 2026<\/p>\n

The mayor, the governor, and the members of the city\u2019s big-ticket tax base are all squaring off over prospective tax increases and service cuts. <\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani presents his preliminary city budget at a City Hall meeting. <\/p>\n

(Michael Brochstein \/ Sipa USA via AP)<\/p>\n

\"Mamdani<\/a><\/p>\n

Judging by Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s performance in City Hall\u2019s Blue Room on Wednesday, there are certain features of New York\u2019s fiscal follies that have changed little during the last several decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last year, New York faced a historic fiscal crisis<\/a>\u2026\u201d Although that sounds like Mamdani, who used the same phrase to describe the city\u2019s current budget challenges, it was actually former Governor Basil Paterson averting doom back in 2009. When David Dinkins took office in 1990, he, too, inherited a fiscal crisis<\/a>, as did Rudy Guiliani<\/a>, who had to close a projected gap of $2.3 billion\u2014out of a total of $31.6 billion\u2014in his first year.<\/p>\n

Viewed historically, especially in the context of a total budget of $127 billion<\/a>, the city\u2019s current $5.4 billion projected deficit\u2014already down from the $12 billion announced a few weeks ago\u2014looks less like a fiscal chasm and more like a pothole. Yet the demands of custom, when coupled with the young mayor\u2019s evident wish to project the financial sobriety signalled by his dark suits and sombre neckties, meant that the press corps\u2014and their readers, viewers and listeners\u2014were again treated to the latest production in a kind of political theatre that never seems to go out of fashion.<\/p>\n

The whole performance is perhaps best summed up by the phrase \u201cor we\u2019ll kill this dog,\u201d an allusion to the classic 1973 cover<\/a> of the National Lampoon, which threatened desperate measures \u201cif you don\u2019t buy this magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In Mamdani\u2019s case, the threat<\/a> was to raise the city\u2019s property taxes\u2014which as the mayor noted is the only significant municipal revenue source not subject to the dictates of Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature\u2014by 9.5 percent above the current level if Albany continues to balk at the mayor\u2019s preferred policy of a 2 percent increase in city income taxes for New Yorkers earning over $1 million a year and an increase in taxes on the city\u2019s most profitable corporations. The New York Times, The City<\/a>, Gothamist<\/a>, Bloomberg<\/a> and the New York Post<\/a> all helpfully put the word \u201cthreat\u201d in their headlines, with the Post front page depicting a masked and pistol-packing Mamdani ordering the governor to \u201cStick Em Up!\u201d (Since this was the Post, both of Mamdani\u2019s guns had the red banner of the former Soviet Union peeking out from their barrels. )<\/p>\n

Current Issue<\/p>\n


\n \"Cover
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There are at least two problems with this perennial pantomime. The first\u2014and given Hochul\u2019s oft-declared reluctance to raise taxes in the midst of her reelection campaign, perhaps the most immediately salient\u2014is that sometimes the other side calls your bluff. Eric Adams, in one of his many borrowings from the Michael Bloomberg playbook<\/a>, painted a target on the city\u2019s public library system during his 2024 budget negotiations with the city council, only to avert disaster at the last minute<\/a>. But Dinkins was forced into a hiring and promotion freeze and other austerity measures<\/a> that accelerated the erosion of city services begun during the 1975 fiscal crisis. (That crisis really was historic, marking the first significant rollback of the La Guardia vision of an abundant public life for New York\u2019s working class and the emergence, at street level, of what would later come to be known as neoliberalism: opportunity and power for the rich, disinvestment and displacement\u2014or as Roger Starr, The New York Times editorial writer who was one of the policy\u2019s chief architects, called it, \u201cplanned shrinkage<\/a>\u201d\u2014for the poor.) Should Mamdani be forced to make good on his threat, the burden would hardly be equitable, since, as The City\u2019s Katie Honan pointed out<\/a>, \u201cHomeowners in predominantly Black neighborhoods also pay property tax rates that can be double what homeowners in primarily white neighborhoods pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then it seemed that even as he was uttering the words, the mayor hardly gave them credence. If instituted under the city\u2019s current property tax system, Mamdani\u2019s proposed\/threatened hike would only bring in an additional $3.7 billion. (That\u2019s if a pending court challenge<\/a> to New York\u2019s property tax regime doesn\u2019t produce a verdict declaring it illegal.) The rest of the funds<\/a> to close the gap would come from a temporary raid on the city\u2019s \u201cRainy Day\u201d reserves and borrowing from city workers\u2019 pension funds. The city\u2019s workforce numbers around 300,000; adding in the 3 million New York City co-op, condo, and homeowners who would see their tax bills go up, plus tenants in the city\u2019s 100,000 commercial buildings who would likely see their rents rise to cover the tax increase, that\u2019s a lot of hostages to fortune Mamdani is offering to Hochul. The hope, presumably, is that the governor will find a U-turn on taxes less politically painful.<\/p>\n

The second problem with this whole drama is that it endlessly defers the hard choices\u2014and political fights\u2014over what kind of city New Yorkers want to live in. To choose one example, the proposed budget includes $543 million next year to help the city comply with a state requirement to cap class sizes at 20 for elementary students and 25 in high schools. That sounds like real money, yet, as Chalkbeat notes<\/a>, just hiring the 6,000 new teachers needed to meet the state mandate will cost more than $600 million\u2014and that figure doesn\u2019t include funding for additional classrooms or school buildings. (It\u2019s also worth remembering that the Adams administration was able to claim compliance with this mandate only by cooking the figures<\/a>, declaring thousands of city classrooms exempt from the law.)<\/p>\n

The other side of this fight is made up of those who believe, along with the Citizens Budget Commission<\/a>, that any tax increase \u201cwill make the City less attractive for New Yorkers who fund our schools, police, and sanitation\u2014and the businesses that create jobs and support our economy.\u201d They already have their analyses, and their arguments, in place. Instead of cutting class sizes, the CBC helpfully suggests<\/a> \u201csecuring relief from the State class size mandate.\u201d By allowing himself and his administration to be cast in this cheese-paring performance of fiscal rectitude, Mamdani is wasting an opportunity to make the case for the more expansive, more just, more affordable\u2014and infinitely more attractive\u2014vision of city life that he ran on so successfully. <\/p>\n

Given the city\u2019s subordinate relationship with Albany, the mayor needs the governor\u2019s support to deliver on that vision. And if this weren\u2019t an election year, the chances of some kind of fiscal compromise would be greater. Given the actual numbers\u2014and the fact that a final budget isn\u2019t due until the summer\u2014the city still might manage to close the gap through a combination of higher-than-anticipated income tax receipts and a small increase in the corporate tax rate.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, the mayor\u2019s promise<\/a> to govern \u201cexpansively and audaciously\u201d is simply not compatible with a budget calculated not to panic the bond market\u2014or the governor\u2019s donors<\/a> in real estate, big tech, or on Wall Street. In the weeks since his inauguration, Mamdani has proven he\u2019s still a world-class communicator<\/a>, and has (more or less) managed to competently clear the city\u2019s streets after the big snow. What we don\u2019t yet know\u2014but may soon find out\u2014is whether he can fight.<\/p>\n

D.D. Guttenplan<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

D.D. Guttenplan is a special correspondent for The Nation and the former host of The Nation Podcast<\/a>. He served as editor of the magazine from 2019 to 2025 and, prior to that, as an editor at large and London correspondent. His books include American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone<\/a>, The Nation: A Biography, and The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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